school is in session

It is that time of year again. Time to start teaching the girls a tad bit more formally. I say that because as parents aren’t we teaching our children every day…shouldn’t we? My girls love to learn about nearly anything. When asked what they like to do in school they start a long list (art, reading, history, science, etc.) and throw in a few others such as cooking and gardening. You’ll never hear the oldest say Math, though, as she is not fond of it, though does above average.

Today is the second day of school. This will be the third year we have schooled with a virtual academy through the state we live in. They send all of our books and supplies to us, we have a teacher that checks in with us, and a wonderful “community” of families all over the state that are doing exactly what we are doing. You won’t likely catch me bad-mouthing public schools or families who choose that route. We technically are in a public school, for one, and every family has different needs and focus. How we got here is a three fold deal:

Our oldest was reading and wanting to learn but didn’t meet the birthday cut-off for school.

Her food sensitivities that we were just discovering at the same time.

Severe issues within our local public schools.

We have continued for a few reasons:

I like knowing what my girls are learning.

The freedom for the girls to learn at their own pace. For instance our second daughter is working at the same level as our first daughter with the exception to reading (and this year I expect her to be caught up.) In our local public schools she would have been forced to slow-up and wait for her class mates.

Food at school is not an issue, loading everyone up every morning is not an issue, taking vacation in the off season is not an issue, etc.

In homes-schooling you trade the conveniences for the in-conveniences. I’ll go out on a limb here and be flat out honest (no flames, please!) There are many days that I wish it were just the twins and I playing and learning with time to clean and cook during their nap time. It’s not everyday but at least once a week that I just wish I didn’t have so much on my plate. The girls’ school takes about 4 or 5 hours of the day with a good chunk of that needing my constant involvement being as they are only in second grade. I would love it to be able to meet with friends for lunch, get all my baking and preserving done without extra “help”, or just to simply have a bit of quite time in my day. It’s a trade, though, and a good one if you ask me. To trade all this for the reasons I listed above.

I’ve never thought poorly of someone for sending their kids to public or private school, though. It’s their decision, they know their kids, they know what they can handle, and they likely do not have the issues with food we do or only have a child or two making being in the car and ready for the day so early much more practical.

Enough about that, I could go on forever on it. I would like to talk more about my frustrations this year. School officially started yesterday. We try to get going a week early seeing as we take the week of Labor Day for vacation. We still do not have much of our curriculum. This has never been an issue before. Yesterday I did Art and History as they are mostly on-line, today is Language Arts which was a little bit harder. Math tomorrow is going to be a problem if I do not have their books and manipulatives, Science and Latin will be darn near impossible.

On a side note, my kids chose to learn Latin. The choices were: Music (we did it last year and they were less than impressed), Spanish, German, French, and Latin. They knew were Spain, France, and Germany were on the map but could not find a country for Latin. I explained the origins of Latin and how it is the basis to many languages as well as music, science, etc. and that it is a “dead” language (no one speaks this language any more.) They picked Latin. That’s my girls, no sense doing something sensible!

Hopefully the big brown truck will stop at my door today with a few more boxes of goodies. We’ve received 3 boxes so far and expect a total of about 10-12. Thankfully, we have the option of printing worksheets on-line, that helps. It also is nice that at this age so much of it is on-line seeing as I plan on taking some school with us on vacation. Not sure how much school or what subjects I will take, but I do plan on keeping at it a bit on days we stick around the room and veg-out a bit.

I just re-read everything above. What a random collection of thoughts. My recess time is over, though and it’s time to get back to digraphs and sentences. If anyone has questions about schooling with an online or virtual academy please ask in the comments and I do a Q and A post.